1 hour workshop or day course: How to choose for your business

What’s the better way of training your staff: taking them out of the office for a whole day of learning? Or keeping it short with an hour-long workshop?

There really is no universal answer. It’s always going to depend on a number of factors, including what your staff are learning and the time you have available for training.

What is your staff learning?

The main factor that needs to be considered first is what kind of information is being learnt. Is it fact heavy? Lots of statistics and numbers? If so, trying to cram it all into one day may not be the best idea. There are limits to what can be remembered – there’s not much point spending a whole day on an important topic if a likely outcome is that much of it will be forgotten. In those cases, it makes more sense to pack the important information into an hour and not lose the rest of the day’s productive work for nothing.

Whether a whole-day or short hour-long session is better depends on what’s being learnt.

The best kinds of learning to do over a day is experiential learning; things where it takes time to understand and grasp the skill at hand. When it’s not about the facts you remember but rather the skills you’ve gained, spending an entire day makes a lot more sense – as the saying goes, you never forget how to ride a bike. Our leadership and management short courses, for example, can be tailored to whatever length you like, depending on your budget and the goals you wish to accomplish.

How much time do you have available?

The other factor in what time-frame you should choose for training is how much time you actually have available.

Can you afford to have your staff not working for an entire day? Opportunity costs can never be ignored. If you’re going to take your staff out of action for a whole day, you need to be confident that the value you’ll gain in the long run will be worth more than what you would gain had they continued working. You need to think carefully about how the time will be spent most valuably.

To learn more about ICML’s offerings, get in touch with us today.